


My Mortal

by Mark_Crorigan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Humor, Parody, References to My Immortal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:07:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 16,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mark_Crorigan/pseuds/Mark_Crorigan
Summary: ON HIATUS - Ever wondered what the events of 'My Immortal' would be like through the eyes of a normal Hogwarts student? 'My Mortal' retells Tara's literary masterpiece through the eyes of Lucy Bonniface, a Slytherin girl in Ebony's dormitory who just wants to get through her final year at Hogwarts smoothly so she can get into the university of her dreams. But that isn't easy when the school is teeming with Mary Sues and bizzare, OOC canon characters having sex in the middle of classrooms all the time.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter/Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Tom Riddle/Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way
Comments: 21
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [My Immortal](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/634621) by Tara Gillespie. 



> These chapters, though I am trying to flesh them out compared to the original, are kept deliberately short so that the events of each chapter directly match those of 'My Immortal' (e.g. Ebony and Draco go to the Good Charlotte concert in Chapter III of the original and therefore the events of that chapter will be confined to Chapter III of 'My Mortal' as well). I hope that makes sense, and that you guys enjoy! Prepz flaming da story much apreeshiated! MCR Rox!  
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Lucy Bonniface yawned as she opened her bleary eyes. Today was the first day of her final year at Hogwarts, and despite her tiredness, she was excited. Reaching over to her bedside table, she felt around on the wooden surface for her glasses. Her friend Maggie was already up, running a hand through her hair and making her bed. 

Lucy swung her legs over the side of the bed, and gingerly lowered her bare feet to the cold stone floor. The coffin in the corner creaked open. Lucy and Maggie exchanged a glance. From out of the coffin rose a third girl, pale and black-haired. When she saw Lucy and Maggie staring at her, she gestured rudely at them with a long, white middle finger decorated with black nail polish. This was Ebony, who for some reason was convinced that she was a vampire. Lucy and Maggie looked at each other again as Ebony closed the lid of her coffin, and padded off to the bathroom clutching their makeup bags.

As Lucy washed her face, Ebony strutted into the bathroom as well. She rinsed her face, dried it, then began to apply her characteristically dramatic makeup. Technically, the girls at Hogwarts weren’t really supposed to wear any makeup, though this rule had never been strictly enforced so most people tended to ignore it, though none ignored it quite as vehemently as Ebony. While Lucy preferred to maintain a fairly natural appearance, just a peachy flush on her cheeks and lips with a little mascara, Ebony’s inspiration seemed to be a cross between a mime and a skeleton. Every morning, she would apply a white mask of foundation, before adding bright red eyeshadow, thick black eyeliner, and black lipstick. To complete the look, Ebony would often cover her watery blue eyes with red contact lenses, though such a step was not present this morning. 

Ebony also seemed to be exempt from the uniform code. While Lucy buckled her mary janes and hitched up her knee socks, she caught a glimpse of Ebony’s clothing for the day. Her upper half was sparsely covered by a black lacy corset, while on her legs was a leather miniskirt and startlingly pink fishnet tights. Her feet were clad in what appeared to be knockoff Doc Martens (This amused Lucy, recalling the time in the fifth year when Ebony had blatantly stolen a pair of Lucy’s own countless Doc Martens boots and tried to argue that they were her own). 

Once dressed, Lucy and Maggie made their way to the Great Hall for breakfast, leaving Ebony and Willow - the fourth girl in their room whose mannerisms greatly resembled Ebony’s - to their preening in front of the mirror in the dorm. On the way, the girls joined up with Adam, a fellow Slytherin and close friend of theirs as he came out of the boy’s dormitory. They sat together in the Great Hall, and Lucy took a light breakfast of a cup of black coffee and a small jam pastry (she rarely had much appetite in the mornings, and eating much more than this too early often just made her feel queasy). While they ate, Dumbledore delivered a speech welcoming the students back for another school year and giving a few general announcements.

After breakfast, Lucy attended her morning lessons. These included her favourite class, ancient studies, the subject she hoped to study at the University of Lyndenby (the universities of Todmore and Lyndenby were considered the Oxbridge of the wizarding world, two of the oldest and most prestigious institutions of magical higher education). 

She joined her friends in the Clocktower Courtyard at break. She sat down on a stone bench next to her boyfriend Matthew, a tall, witty, and sturdily-built Hufflepuff, who draped an arm around her shoulders. Her main friend group was made up of around eight people and spanned three of the four houses: Lucy herself, Maggie, and Adam from Slytherin; Matthew, Amanda, and Jack from Hufflepuff; and Timothy and Ruth from Ravenclaw. Sometimes also present was Isaac, a loud Gryffindor who floated on the outskirts of the group when his Quidditch friends grew irritated of his boisterous and laddish temperament, though none of them considered him a particularly close companion.

Suddenly, the temperature dropped and it began to sleet, and Lucy wrapped her robes tighter around her as Matthew drew her in closer. 

“Don’t look now, here comes Dracula.” Timothy muttered, nodding his head towards Ebony who had just stepped out into the courtyard. Ebony noticed the group staring, and stuck her middle finger up at them. They raised their collective eyebrows in interest and amusement as they saw Draco Malfoy come up behind Ebony and begin talking to her. Though none of them could quite make out what occurred in the conversation, Draco appeared nervous as he spoke to her. The exchange was cut short, however, when a small gaggle of other outlandishly dressed girls called Ebony over.

The group all looked at each other. Draco walked past them, and Amanda whistled teasingly. 

“What’s going on there then, Draco?” asked Jack.  
“Diddling the undead, are we?” chimed in Ruth.  
“That doesn’t sound very legal.” observed Lucy.

Draco’s face turned pink and twisted in anger. “Shut up! Shut up so much, all of you, you stupid fucking preps!”

They replied with a mocking chorus of “Oooh!” as Draco stormed back inside.


	2. Chapter II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the positive comments so far! I'm glad you're enjoying my silly take on this. Again, sorry apologies for the chapter being shorter than I'd strictly like but in my defense, I don't have the meatiest of source material to work with. Pls continyu reviowing da stroy, GC r da best!!  
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The next day was much the same. Lucy got up, shared a silent, wary glance with Maggie in the direction of Ebony’ coffin, was sworn at, washed, and dressed. While she brushed and French-plaited Maggie’s hair kneeling in front of the mirror (a ritual they had performed on most mornings ever since they met in the first year), she overheard a conversation between Ebony and Willow about Ebony’s encounter with Draco as they clothed themselves in their own bizarre interpretations of a school uniform. However, eavesdropping on them didn’t hold her interest for long, and she and Maggie soon left the dorm to meet up with Adam as they had yesterday. 

They sat down and listened to the morning's announcements, delivered today by Professor Flitwick, before starting their breakfasts. Lucy couldn't help but notice Ebony and Draco sitting a few seats away from each other, and every now and then one would glance shiftily up at the other before redirecting their attention to their food (if one could really call what Ebony ate in an average day food, so much questionably sourced blood surely could not be good for the digestive system). 

Lucy was a little groggy today. Like most of the women in her family she was prone to migraines, and the weather was giving her a headache. The morning passed slowly and drearily. The sleet from yesterday still blighted the grounds, and the central heating in the castle itself was lacking at the best of times. She was glad when lunch came around, and took great relish in ladling herself a generous portion of creamy tomato soup and clasping her chilled hands around a chunk of baguette, still warm from the oven. She chatted absentmindedly to Adam and Maggie as she buttered her bread. 

"Did you hear there's a concert in Hogsmeade this evening?" asked Adam casually. 

"No, who's playing?" replied Margot, raising an eyebrow. 

"Muggle band from the States, I think they were called Good Charlotte?" 

Lucy frowned and shook her head. "Never heard of them." This nonchalant remark earnt her a death glare from Ebony, sitting several seats away, who had somehow heard the conversation but mercifully didn't comment. 

"Are you going to it?" Lucy asked, having returned Ebony's stare. 

"Wasn't planning on it, but we could. I've not got any homework tonight. We don't have to stay for the whole thing if we don't like it or it gets too late." 

"Fair enough. I'll mention it to the others, I've got Ruth and Matthew in potions, then transfigurations with Tim this afternoon." Why not? Lucy thought as she swallowed a mouthful of soup. 

Later that day, after supper, Adam was decimating Maggie at chess in the common room, and Lucy spied Draco approaching Ebony once again. She still couldn’t hear their exchange properly, but she did manage to extract a few words, including ‘Good Charlotte concert’ and ‘go with me’. Lucy nudged Adam in the ribs with the spine of the book she was reading. 

“Sounds like Draco and his corpse bride are going to the concert.”

Adam smirked at Lucy, a wicked glint coming into his eye. “It’s decided then. We have to go now, don’t we?”


	3. Chapter III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be on the safe side, self-harm trigger warning for this chapter. And at this point I'm not even going to pretend that Lucy is any less of a blatant, gratuitous self-insert as Ebony but I saw a Tumblr textpost on Instagram from like 2 years ago telling me it was okay so that means it is. Anyways so, stan The Fratellis for instant coochie and clout, fangs 2 raven 4 da help  
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The three of them dispersed into their respective dorm rooms to change out of their uniforms. As Lucy pulled off her jumper, it struck her that neither she nor Maggie really had the sort of clothes that would suit a concert that would appeal to people of Ebony’s kind. Rummaging through her chest of drawers, then noticing a similar pensive expression etched into Maggie’s features as she fiddled with her own garments, it dawned on Lucy that her whole friend group would be hard-pressed to truly blend in with such a crowd. She mentally cursed her parents for raising her to dress so sensibly - cable-knit rollnecks, tweed skirts and the right surname only get a girl into so many elitist underground bars, and certainly not a concert for people who never quite grew out of their preteen pop-punk phase. 

She dove in further, past her ditsy-print summer dresses, past her foppish frilly blouses, past her collection of tartan trousers, until finally her fingertips found and extracted something made of black velvet. It was a dress - a short, tight one at that - that Lucy remembered buying on a whim, trying on again at home, then bursting out laughing at herself and throwing into the floor of the wardrobe in her bedroom. It had somehow found its way into her suitcase (perhaps she planned on wearing it to a common room party?), and despite her better judgement, she slipped it on and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked less ridiculous than she remembered, especially given the context. Satisfied, she sat down on her bed and pulled out one of her seemingly endless pairs of Doc Martens. In retrospect, Lucy probably wouldn’t have noticed if one pair succumbed to Ebony’s kleptomania, but it was the principle that offended her more than the act itself.

Lucy looked over at Maggie to see if she was ready, but before the two could exchange any words Ebony entered the dorm, presumably to prepare herself for the concert as well. Though she eyed Lucy and Maggie’s attire suspiciously, she didn’t say anything, instead heading straight for her own chest of drawers, donning a leather corseted minidress, some slightly tattered red fishnet tights, and a pair of black boots with sharp, towering heels. Then, without warning, Ebony seized a small pocket-knife from a drawer of her bedside table and slowly dragged the blade horizontally across her wrist. Even though Lucy and Maggie were well aware that Ebony’s self harm was not a cry for help but merely to draw attention to herself, it still inspired instinctive feelings of pity. Lucy cringed squeamishly at the sight of the blood slowly pooling up around the wound. 

Still blanking her dorm-mates’ stares, Ebony slunk over to the record player in the corner of the room, clutching a Good Charlotte vinyl. Fearing for the safety of her own precious vinyls, Lucy lunged in the same direction and carefully removed Costello Music from the player before Ebony, shooting a glare at Lucy, dropped the needle onto her record. As the music began to play, Ebony returned to her bed and began to flick through a worn-looking copy of Twilight: New Moon while her wrist continued to bleed.

Lucy did her best to ignore her as she sat cross-legged on her bed looking into a hand mirror and brushing through her eyebrows. She and Maggie mouthed and gestured at each other for a few moments, eventually agreeing that now was probably the time to leave.

The girls reconvened with their friends in the car park. Of the eight of them, only Adam, Matthew, and Ruth had driving licenses - not that it mattered too much as they all fit comfortably when they split themselves between two cars. Lucy, Matthew, Amanda, and Tim boarded Matthew’s Saab 900, an 80’s hand-me-down from an uncle. Though she found it decidedly less comfortable than her father’s pride and joy, his classic Range Rover, Lucy felt at ease in the Saab. She and Matthew had ended up spending their first date picnicking on its roof after it had broken down on the way to Hogsmeade.

While Maggie, Jack, and Ruth scrambled for shotgun of Adam’s Volkswagen Polo, Amanda pointed out of the window at Ebony approaching Draco and his car on the other side of the car park. The four of them watched intently as they exchanged greetings and stepped inside Draco’s car, a meticulously polished Mercedes with vanity plates reading ‘666’ (was that legal?). They could hear the music they put on from all the way on the other side of the car park, and Matthew’s trained eye observed that it looked like Draco had lit a blunt. 

Adam started his car and began to fly off, so Matthew followed suit and they flew in convoy to the venue. Once parked, they trailed into the mosh pit in time to hear the support act, another band that Lucy had never heard of called Simple Plan, perform. None of the music was particularly to Lucy’s taste, though she enjoyed the atmosphere. Every now and then, she caught a glimpse of Draco and Ebony, though they were never in the same place for long. She thought she saw them sneak backstage at the end of the concert, though she wasn’t quite sure. So many couples around them were dressed so similarly it could have been almost anyone.

The group got back to the car park just in time to see Draco’s car leave. They began the return journey to Hogwarts a few yards behind the Mercedes. However, when Matthew and Adam began to descend back into the Hogwarts grounds, the Mercedes continued straight on over the castle.

Lucy stepped out of the Saab, craning her neck up at the sky. 

“Where are they going?” She asked.

Amanda joined her, looking towards the car disappearing into the night sky. “Looks like they’re headed towards the Forest… But they can’t be?”

“Leave them to it. They’re the ones who’ll get in trouble. Besides, did you see the size of that blunt?” There was a twinge of jealousy in Matthew’s voice as he came up behind Lucy and Amanda. “Draco’s probably off his tits and forgot to land. We’ll hear about the car wreck being fished out of the trees tomorrow morning.”

“Hmm.” Lucy murmured in agreement, turning to walk back to the castle but keeping her eyes fixed over her shoulder at the silhouette of the treetops into which the car had just vanished.


	4. Chapter IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I readily admit that this chapter is boring as fuck. Since in the original it's just a sex scene between Ebony and Draco, I couldn't see much opportunity to have Lucy and co interact with them without reaching in a pretty major way. So, I tried to mirror the events of My Immortal's chapter iv, just substituting Ebony and Draco with Lucy and Matthew (nothing as graphic though, for the time being at least I'm going to keep it family friendly pg 13 clean). MATTHEW IS SOO IN LUV wif her dat he is acting defrent! dey nu eechodder b4 ok!
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While Maggie and Adam made their way back to the Slytherin dorms, Lucy decided to spend the rest of the evening with Matthew in the Hufflepuff common room. The room was illuminated by the fire beginning to settle in the hearth, and was as good as empty, save for a trio of third years chattering quietly in their pyjamas by a table on the far side of the room. The pair sat down on the plush couch that faced the fireplace, and Matthew gingerly pulled Lucy in closer. Though they had been together for a little while, since the early summer term of last year, there was still a residual adolescent clumsiness to their interactions. Their cuddling was often slightly awkward, with stray limbs ending up in less than comfortable positions, and nervous kisses that sometimes didn’t quite line up properly. Nevertheless, Matthew and Lucy simply enjoyed being in each-other’s company.

Lucy gently laid her head down onto Matthew’s broad chest, and he wrapped his arms protectively around her, drawing up a hand to play with a few loose strands of her hair. He pressed a tender kiss to the top of her head, and she smiled softly, gazing into the fire. They stayed in this position for a while, silent and still, before Matthew stroked a hand down Lucy’s head and brought it to rest on the nape of her neck, drawing her face closer to his. They closed their eyes as their lips connected, their kiss gentle at first.

Lucy broke away momentarily to shift positions, straddling Matthew’s sturdy quidditch-playing thighs, blushing and fighting back a nervous giggle as Matthew began to smirk lewdly up at her as his hands settled on her hips. His smirk grew into a laugh as he pulled Lucy’s burning face back down to his, catching her lips with his. One of his hands crept around and squeezed her buttock, and Lucy squeaked and pulled away, eyes wide in surprise. Matthew’s face dropped, fearing he had overstepped, but was relieved when Lucy sank back down again, snaking her arms around his neck and tangling her fingers into his hair.

The three third years finally noticed the change in atmosphere and quickly vacated the common room, eyeing the couple warily. 

“Looks like we’re alone now.” observed Matthew, his voice low and slightly guttural.

Lucy stared blankly at him, her mouth falling open when his suggestion registered in her mind. “We can’t! Here?”

Matthew shrugged. “Sure we can. Everyone’s bound to be in bed by now.” He knitted his brow in concern. “Do you not want to?”

“No, I do want to. I just…” her voice failed her. She fidgeted for a moment. “Well, I’ve never done it before.”

This earnt a chuckle from Matthew. He gently flipped them over so that Lucy lay beneath him, propping himself up on his elbow. “Relax, there’s a first time for everything.” He kissed her again, then suddenly jerked back upwards, breaking character. “If you want me to stop, just say.” 

Lucy bit her lip as Matthew descended on her once again, his kisses now more aggressive as he began to roll his hips against hers. The sensation made her inhale sharply, but she tightened her grip on Matthew’s hair, urging him to continue. Balancing carefully, Matthew began to trail a hand up the outside of her thigh and under the tight velvet of her dress. He gently lifted her hips and pressed them closer into his.

“Matt! You’re not going to believe this shit!” Jack, with the amount of grace that would far better befit a small hurricane, burst through the door of the common room, blunt in hand.


	5. Chapter V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ebony returns, thank Satan! Chapter updates may or may not become a little more sporadic as my school are encouraging us to start thinking about our personal statements and university applications and all that. I enjoy writing this tho, so I'll see what I can do to make time. Da only reson Jcak swor is coz he is hiygh ok an on tup of dat he wuz mad at dem 4 making outt!
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The back of the sofa on which Matthew and Lucy lay concealed them slightly, but still they froze. After a few too many moments of expectant silence, the pair slowly rose, revealing themselves.

“Oh. Hi Luce, didn’t know you were in here too.” Jack greeted casually and took a drag of his blunt, utterly oblivious to what he had just interrupted. He offered the blunt to Matthew, who eagerly accepted.

“What is he not going to believe?” asked Lucy.

“Oh yeah.” Jack sniggered, though Lucy wasn’t quite sure if that was because what he had to say was utterly hilarious, or just because he was high. 

Lucy looked at Matthew, who now had an equally inane smile spreading across his face. She looked back at Jack, raising her eyebrows to prompt him.

“Okay, so.” Jack finally responded. “You know how we saw Draco and Ebony heading towards the forest instead of parking, and Matthew thought it was because they were shitfaced?”

Matthew and Lucy nodded.

“Well, turns out he did it deliberately. They went there to shaaaag…” he drawled out his final word, leaning down to take another puff of the blunt that Matthew was still holding between his thumb and forefinger.

Lucy’s jaw dropped, laughter tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘How do you know?”

Jack let out a short, sharp cackle. “They got caught, didn’t they? Big Dumbles was doing his rounds and must’ve heard them. Brought them back here for a bollocking. I'd gone to grab some hash from my hiding place by that gargoyle thing on the third floor and I heard Snape and McGonogall giving them shiiiit."

Lucy narrowed her eyes, her open-mouthed expression of amusement quickly morphing into one of bewildered disappointment. "You keep your hash right next to Big Dumbles' office?"

"Is that what that is? Dude, no way, I never knew that." Jack chortled, which turned into a violent cough when Matthew accidentally blew a cloud of smoke into his face. 

Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. The anticlimax of her interactions with a now very giggly Matthew had made her suddenly realise how tired she was, and she looked up at the clock. If she walked quickly, she could probably make it back to the dungeons before Snape and pretend she'd been there all evening. 

"I'm going to call it a day. Night guys, I'll see you tomorrow." she announced, rising from the sofa. She pressed a kiss to Matthew's cheek and whispered "Love you" into his ear, though judging from the dreamy look in his bloodshot, half-closed eyes, it probably didn't register. 

One day, she'd take the two of them up on their offer and share a spliff with them, but not while her rather traumatic cocaine experience from her brother's 19th birthday was still quite so fresh in her mind. It was bad enough being fished out of the fountain at five in the morning in nothing but her underwear and a pair of swimming goggles by her mother, the last thing she wanted was to have a repeat of that but instead of sloaney, lenient Mummy coming to her aid, the person scooping her up and drying her off was someone like Snape. That being said, if Snape had been the acting lifeguard at James'19th, he'd have probably just left her to drown. He hated both Lucy and James with as much passion as any students whose parents had been in the same year as him, in fact he'd vowed to terrorise every single child bearing the surname Bonniface for as long as he taught at Hogwarts ever since Lucy’s father had stuck a wad of enchanted chewing gum in his hair in the second year that didn't come out for a month. 

Lucy darted cautiously through the dark halls, diving into her dorm just before Snape went past to check that everyone was in bed. Maggie already seemed to be asleep. Ebony, however, was still very much awake, brushing her hair in front of the mirror and wearing a different dress to the one Lucy remembered her wearing earlier. As Lucy walked past, she saw thin streaks of red streaming down her face.

“Um, Ebony? Are you alright?” She asked. “It’s just you seem to be bleeding out of your eyes.”

Ebony turned around sharply to look at her. “Im crying. U wouldn’t understand u stupid fucking prep, I cry blood bcuz im goffick.”

Lucy was stunned. “How did you say that out loud?”

Ebony didn’t answer. Lucy surmised that she was far too much of a prep to deserve to know her secrets. She picked up her toiletries bag from the top of her chest of drawers and went into the bathroom. 

As she waited for the water to warm up, she heard noises outside the door. She crept closer, and closer, and closer, until she was pressing the whole side of her face against the wood. It was definitely two people. One of the voices was clearly Ebony, Lucy could tell that much from her bizarre inflection. That meant that the other must have been Draco. And was he… singing? Lucy bit back a snort when she realised, then went back to the sink.


	6. Chapter VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was torn as to whether or not to refer to Harry as Vampire or not. I figured that Harry as he appears in My Immortal is just SO far removed from how he behaved in the original series, it makes sense to just give him a totally different name as he may as well be a different character, but let me know what you guys think.
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Lucy groaned as she felt Maggie jostling her awake.

“Wake up you dozy bint, we’ve overslept. Bella Swan smashed the alarm clock for reasons unbeknownst even to herself, so you have exactly eleven minutes to be completely ready.”

Maggie was already half-dressed when Lucy forced her eyes open. After an initial burst of panicked energy in hurriedly dressing herself, Lucy found herself rather sluggish as she washed her face and confined her barely-combed hair to two clips. Scarecly having time to snatch up her make-up bag before Maggie dragged her by the wrist out of the dorm, Lucy and Maggie screeched to a halt outside the Great Hall just in time for them to blend in with the last few stragglers.

After the daily announcements (along with a stern reminder that the Forbidden Forest was strictly out of bounds to students unaccompanied by a senior member of staff), Lucy began to peer into a small pocket mirror at her bare face, occasionally sipping her cup of coffee. While she coated her eyelashes, she heard a commotion from a little further down the Slytherin table. She looked up to see Ebony, drenched in blood that she had presumably been trying to consume, appearing to be picking a fight with someone. 

“Has he always been in Slytherin? I don’t recognise him.” She asked Adam quietly, nudging him with her elbow and nodding towards Ebony’s latest victim

Adam turned to look in the same direction as Lucy. “No, don’t think so. He’s probably one of the people that got caught in the reshuffle.”

“Ohh. Remind me who they were again?”

“Right, so,” Adam rubbed his forehead and shifted in his seat, and began to count on his fingers. “Theo Nott went to Ravenclaw, and Millie Bulstrode, Daphne Greengrass, and Tracey Davis went to Gryffindor. And we got…” He furrowed his brow. “We got Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Neville Longarse.”

“They’ve all changed their names though, haven’t they.” Maggie murmured, not looking up from her food.

Lucy frowned, and looked back over at Ebony and the boy she’d lashed out at. They seemed to be chattering quite amicably now. “They’ve changed their names?”

“Yeah, since they moved houses. I guess they got it into their heads that you can only be in Slytherin if you’re some kind of Bauhaus reject, so they’ve all got different names. Plus, apparently Granger found out she was adopted or something like that? I’ve only heard bits of the story, though, so I’m not sure how much I buy it.”

“Oh. So who’s Ebony talking to then?”

Maggie looked over too. “Looks like Harry Potter.” Lucy shook her head vaguely, indicating she didn’t recognise the name. “Orphan? Funny scar?” Lucy’s memory was still murky. “Draco had a wet dream about him in the common room in, like, fourth year? Came all over one of the sofas?”

Lucy had to exert quite some effort to not douse everyone sitting around her in a spray of coffee and toast crumbs. “I remember.” She choked out once she’d finally swallowed. “I see it now.”

“Shall we eavesdrop?” Adam suggested.

“Absolutely.” Lucy replied with gusto.

In a fluid, comical motion, the three of them leaned in unison in the direction of Harry and Ebony.

“...although most people call me Vampire these days.” They heard Harry - sorry, Vampire - say in a low voice, almost as if he felt embarrassed by the nickname.

“Why?” Ebony asked.

“Because I love the taste of human blood.” He replied, an unsettling smile creeping across his face. Lucy, Maggie, and Adam looked at each other with a worrying glance, then back to the objects of their concern.

“Well, I am a vampire.” Now it was Ebony’s turn to look smug. Though Lucy was disappointed that Ebony still insisted on keeping up this bizarre fantasy, she was in no way surprised. Vampire seemed to cringe away from her slightly in fear.

“Really?” There was more awe in Vampire’s voice than disbelief, which troubled Lucy greatly.

“Yeah!” Ebony replied, a little too loudly. Several surrounding pairs of eyes turned their attention to her - half of them curious, the other mildly irritated - but this attention was dealt with in her signature fashion. Ebony’s middle finger was probably the most famous finger in their year, second only to Rory Schroeder’s after Sadie Callery couldn’t keep her mouth shut in the aftermath of a particularly rowdy fifth year common room party.

After that, the two of them finally sat down and the rest of their conversation was swallowed by the hum of chatter in the hall. Lucy, Maggie, and Adam settled back to their food, disappointed.

“That’s another one for the cult, then.” Adam observed. Lucy and Maggie snickered in agreement.

“Oi oi, don’t look now. What’s Draco going to make of all this?” Maggie nodded towards Draco who had just appeared at Ebony’s side. After whispering something into her ear, Ebony stood up and left the Great Hall with Draco, leaving Vampire alone and jealous-seeming to the viscera he was trying to eat. He noticed his three classmates looking at him in mock fascination, and responded by growling at them like he thought it might deter them rather than just adding to their reasons to ridicule.


	7. Chapter VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next couple of chapters are just short ones, even by this story's standards, so I might just upload them both today so they feel more like one chapter. That being said, I particularly enjoyed writing these two because of how batshit insane they are in My Immortal. Loosey isn’t a Marie Sue ok she isn’t perfect SHES A SLYTTERIN! n she has problemz shes ambishus 4 godz sake!
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Once Lucy had finished her breakfast, she and Maggie returned to the dorm to gather their books for the morning’s lessons. As they passed the door to one of the boys’ dormitories, they couldn’t help but hear the creaking of a bedframe. No matter how hard they tried to suppress it, the image of Draco and Ebony wrapped in a passionate, writhing embrace barged into their minds uninvited, remaining there completely rent-free until Lucy finally managed to wrangle her attention to her timetable. She crinkled her nose in distaste. Nothing like double potions to wake somebody up in the morning. Sweeping up her books in her arms, she made her way down the corridor to Snape’s classroom.

She joined the ranks of the first few students to be lined up outside the door, all muttering in discontent at their timetabling misfortune. Before long, Ruth appeared and came to stand by Lucy, fiddling with her hair that she was never quite happy with. Ruth Abelman was the type of person who could go through seven different hairstyles a day, and still be experimenting with it at dinnertime. After a few moments, the rugged wooden door opened with an obnoxious creak, and Snape emerged from the dank room in its place. The students fell silent.

“Come in.” He beckoned in his signature nasal, disapproving tone.

Lucy, Ruth, Matthew, and Matthew’s childhood friend Tony Cohen, took their seats at their regular table near the back of the classroom. Snape stood expectantly at the front of the classroom, waiting for the scraping of wood on the flagstone and the shuffling of papers to finally end. There was an unspoken though very active running competition in that potions class as to who could exacerbate the scraping and shuffling for the longest without actually getting in trouble, as Snape refused to commence the lesson before the room was in utter silence. Isaac was the reigning champion, with Ernie Macmillan running a close second, though today’s last scrape was had by Hannah Abbott before the power of Snape’s oleaginous sneer finally got the better of them.

“Today,” Snape began “We shall be continuing preparations for your N.E.W.T level exams. I still find it positively… miraculous that as many of you have managed to reach this point in your education, though I have decided to take this as a mark of my ability as a teacher than any of you having any particular talent or aptitude. Open your textbooks to page thr-”

He was cut off by the door opening violently, hinges squealing as it swung back and crashed against the wall. Twelve heads whipped around, and twelve pairs of eyes stared, startled but curious, at the intruder.

“Vampire Potter, you motherfucker!” Ebony bellowed.


	8. Chapter VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, because these chapters are so short I'm just posting them together.
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Snape was silent. Vampire was silent. For a moment, the entire room was covered in such a thick blanket of shock that it was only when Draco scuttled in behind Ebony, naked, with his hands clasped around his crotch, did the class erupt into hysteria. Lucy and Ruth began clapping like seals and shrieking with laughter as Draco grabbed hold of Ebony’s arm, seemingly unaware that he was utterly exposed to twelve of his yearmates, grovelling at her.

“Ebony, it’s not what you think!” Draco cried. Matthew and Tony doubled over and slammed their fists down onto the table, almost choking on their howls of mirth.

Snape finally spoke, barely containing his apoplexy. “What is it you desire, you ridiculous dimwit?”

“Vampire, I can’t believe you cheated on me with Draco!”

The class feigned a scandalised gasp, then returned to their cackling

Suddenly, Lucy caught sight of (and pointed out to her friends) a small tattoo on Draco’s upper arm. It was a picture of a black heart being pierced by an arrow, with a banner around it displaying the word “Vampire”. 

“I thought Harry was seeing Britney Avila?” gasped Tony in-between laughs, desperately trying to regain his composure and failing dismally. Snape, inflamed, still made no attempt to calm the class.

Vampire rose from his seat and gingerly approached Ebony as if she were an enraged manticore. He shakily rested his hands on her shoulders, flinching slightly as he made contact with her.

“But,” he said quietly, suggesting that he didn’t want the rest of the class to hear more of this perverse drama (to which they responded by falling silent again and listening to his words intently.) “I’m not going out with Draco anymore.”

For some reason, this seemed to only further incense Ebony. Lucy could see her eyes film over with tears, threatening to spill over there and then. Her lip trembled and her furrowed brow seemed to twitch. The class seemed to be holding their breath in eagerness to hear this response that she was taking so long to craft.

Finally, the silence was shattered by Ebony’s reply. 

“Yeah fucking right! Fuck off, you bastard!” She spat into his face as if the words were bitter on her tongue before tearing out of the room yet again, slamming the door behind her.


	9. Chapter IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As with Chapter 4, for the sake of realism I've decided to write a parallel series of events rather than trying to directly shoehorn my characters into what Tara wrote. So, we're not going to meet Voldemort just yet I'm afraid, but don't you worry my friends, he is coming ;)))). I dntn red all da boox! dis is frum da movie ok so itz nut my folt!
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Now that Ebony had left again, Draco suddenly seemed to become aware of exactly where he was. A benevolent Ravenclaw (still sniggering) offered him a textbook with which to cover himself, though at this point the sight of his genitals had been seared into the minds of everyone in the room. First he met Vampire’s gaze, then Snape’s, but before Snape could unleash the tirade of abuse he undoubtedly had lying in wait behind his lips, Draco spun on his heels and darted into the corridor, presumably after Ebony.

All eyes were now on Snape, every second of his silence dragging into what felt like hours.

“Sit… Down… Potter…” He said, dangerously quietly and turning his back on the class as Vampire slunk back to his seat, head bowed in humuliation. “Eighty points from Slytherin!” Snape cried, suddenly whipping around with his robes swirling by his feet and unleashing a spray of spittle from his trembling mouth. Were they not frozen in place by their better judgement, every Slytherin in the room would have let out an outraged groan.

Snape stood at the front of the room for another few moments, surveying his students and the effect his outburst had had on them. Eventually, he seemed satisfied with his performance and drew a deep breath, calming himself. 

“Now… Unless there are any more asinine interruptions to be had, we shall resume the lesson. Open your textbooks to page three-hundred-and-eighty-eight.”

The class proceeded in a subdued manner. Nobody dared to subtly taunt or rile Snape in the way they normally would for fear of misstepping and finding themselves on the wrong end of his wrath.

When the double period finally drew to a close, none of the students could scamper out of the classroom and into the Clocktower Courtyard fast enough to tell their friends what had just transpired before their very eyes.

“Wait, wait, slow down.” said Tim with his hands raised, trying to decipher Lucy and Ruth’s delirious babbling. “So Ebony comes in screaming at Harry-"

"Vampire." Amanda corrected him, half-ironically.

"Sure, Vampire, whatever. So Ebony ran in screaming bloody murder, then what happened?”

“Draco runs in absolutely bollock-naked. Starts begging like a total bottom for Ebony to take him back because I guess he shagged Harry-"

"Vampire." Amanda corrected him, shaking off a distinct feeling of deja vu.

"Yeah, fine, he was shagging Vampire while he was meant to be shagging her.” Matthew explained, filling in for Lucy and Ruth who had both now crumpled against a wall clutching at their sides and emitting a sustained, high-pitched wheezing sound that better resembled the whistle of a boiling kettle than anything that could be produced by human vocal cords.

Before break had even ended, retellings of these events had been spread in various incarnations and had managed to circulate around Hogwarts twice. By the time Amanda spotted Draco and Ebony emerging from the Forbidden Forest once again, there wasn’t a single student that didn’t have a clear image in their mind’s eye of that potions class. 

Though Ebony looked shaken about something, nobody could take either of them seriously enough to ask her what had happened.


	10. Chapter X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suicide trigger warning for this chapter. Things are heating up (you all know how the story goes at this point): Draco is found dead in his dorm, and its assumed he killed himself after an argument between him and Ebony. But is that the full story? :0 (who the fuck actually knows, I've got to the stage where I'm not even convinced Tara did). ps it turnz out b’loody mary isn’t a muggle afert al n she n vampire r evil datz y dey movd houses ok!
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“Give me a second, I just need to grab something from the dorm.” said Adam, stopping his friends as they headed down the corridor to leave school. 

“Fine, but be quick. The table I booked at Three Broomsticks was for quarter to seven, and you know they don’t hold that shit if you’re late.” Tim warned, checking his watch. 

“Yeah, whatever.” Adam turned and trotted in the direction of the dungeons.

Tim, ever famous for his impatience, barely gave Adam a minute and a half before he tutted and looked at his watch again, announcing huffily that he was taking too long. “Go fetch him will you, Luce? He’s probably got stuck in front of the mirror.”

Lucy eyed him. “What did your last slave die of? It’s fine, we’ve got buckets of time.”

Pursing his lips, Tim decided to go nuclear. “I’ll buy you as many daisyroot draughts as you can drink if you go and get him.”

“Done.” She was already bolting down the hallway.

As she drew nearer the Slytherin common room, she began to hear a rather obnoxious din coming from its direction. She entered, and was greeted by the sound of Ebony and her band (if one could really call it that) playing some ghastly cover of a song that Lucy only recognised from the cringeworthy memories of her emo phase in second year. It was a shame really, because the particular song they seemed to be attempting (“Helena”, by My Chemical Romance) Lucy still didn’t mind at all; in fact she still had it saved on one of her Spotify playlists for when she felt angsty. But now it was… tainted. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Ebony actually knew how to play her out-of-tune guitar, rather than just thrashing her arms around in a way that she probably thought was visually appealing.

Adam was nowhere to be seen in the common room. Bugger. It wasn’t that Lucy couldn’t get into the boy’s rooms, Adam had been sneaking her and Maggie in there for years when they wanted to have private conversations away from the ever-listening ears of a group of particularly gossipy now fourth-year girls who never quite seemed to get anything the right way around, it was just that without Adam physically with her, it was a lot more complicated. First, she had to wiggle a very specific loose brick near the door that would alert Adam that there was someone outside. Then, she had to tap out the pig Latin version of her full name (Ucialay Enelopepay Onnifacebay) in Morse code (..- -.-. .. .- .-.. .- -.--/ . -. . .-.. --- .--. . .--. .- -.--/ --- -. -. .. ..-. .- -.-. . -... .- -.--), whistling the chorus of her choice of Simon and Garfunkel song in between words. Lucy didn’t and probably would never understand why Adam was so pedantic about any of this. She suspected it was a residual obsession with codes that remained in him from his phase in the first year when all that excited him was talking about Bletchley Park (Adam was a half-blood, with a magical mother and a muggle father fascinated with the Second World War). 

Nevertheless, she humoured him. After performing the appropriate combination of tapping and whistling, she waited outside the door to be let in. And waited. And waited a little longer still. Tim was not going to be happy about this. Was he in the bathroom, perhaps? Then she really would be stuck. It was one thing being smuggled into the boys’ dormitory, the boys’ bathroom was taking the piss a bit. Lucy smiled to herself at the pun. Maybe he just hadn’t heard her, somehow?

She started the ritual again, but as she knocked harder she realised that the door was unlocked. How did she not notice that? She really needed to work on being more observant.

She pushed the door lightly, gingerly stepping over the threshold. The room was dark, but she could hear shuffling in the gloom.

“Adam?” She called out, and was greeted by a sob and a figure hurling itself at her out of the darkness. She yelped and seized her wand from her pocket, crying out “Lumos!” before she’d even properly drawn it. Waving it around wildly, she realised that the lanky figure that had wrapped itself tightly around her was in fact Adam, shivering. Carefully, she pried him off her, keeping a steadying hand on his upper arm and holding her lit wand up in the other. Adam trembled and fought for breath for a moment in her grip, looking down into her confused, worried face. He was ashen, almost anaemic-looking, staring blankly with large, frightened eyes.

“What’s wrong, what happened?” Lucy queried.

Adam finally managed to steady himself enough to speak. He wet his lips. “Its Draco. He’s - he’s dead.”

“What?”

Adam stepped aside so that Lucy could see the bed behind him. She inched closer, holding her wand in front of her with Adam behind her, looking warily over her shoulder. Eventually, before she really believed what she was seeing, the whole horrible scene was bathed in light.

Draco was slumped over, his hair hanging down and covering his face like a shroud. His arms were stretched out by his sides, palms up, with deep, wine-dark gouges running vertically from the wrist to the inner elbow. His blood had spilt out from his arms onto the bedclothes, creating gruesome patterns and puddles that were distressingly vivid against the white of the sheets. Lucy’s mouth fell agape in horror, and for a moment she could make no sound at all. Then, she began to let out a breathy, quivering wail as she stepped back away from the bed, rising to a shrill scream as she suddenly became violently aware of the cloying, visceral odour clinging to the air. She flinched spasmodically several times as if desperately trying to brush off the crawling of her own skin and recoiled backwards, grasping onto Adam as he had done to her before, and they remained there like for a moment almost frozen. Adam began to scream as well, though his cries were far more mournful than Lucy’s, which resounded with raw horror.

Then, finally, when they had wrestled control of their senses away from the sight of Draco’s body, they scrambled for the door, flinging it open and stumbling into the hallway as they tripped over each other in their haste. Ebony and her band took no notice of the two of them running as fast as they could.

“Hey! What took you so bloody long, we’re going to be late!” Tim shouted at them as they sprinted past, and huffed when he didn’t get an answer before they disappeared down the hall.

They kept going until they finally bumped into Dumbledore, who at first chastised them for running in the building, but upon seeing their grave expressions stopped to let them speak.

“Draco’s dead!” They blurted out in unison. “He’s in the dorms!”


	11. Chapter XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually really happy with how this chapter turned out, and I managed to make it considerably longer than all its predecessors. Yes, Matthew is a total himbo, no I do not accept criticism. Since Tara's chapters start to get longer for a little while at this point in the story, I'll be trying to mimic that, therefore it might take me longer to update the next few. Please keep the comments coming in, it's always super encouraging to know that people are enjoying reading this even half as much as I am writing it. c if dis chaptr is srupid!1111 it delz wit rly sris issus!
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Without a word, Dumbledore swept down to the dungeons, with Lucy and Adam trailing behind him and trying to console themselves. He was met with the same horrific sight that Lucy and Adam were still recovering from. Though he was ostensibly alarmed, he just managed to maintain his composure for long enough to enter the common room and inform Ebony.

“What have you done?” He cried. Ebony was sitting down on a couch with the girl that Lucy recognised as Hermione Granger, but now went by B’loody Mary Smith, holding an arm around her shoulder. She already looked like she’d been crying when she looked up at Dumbledore. “Ebony, Draco has been found dead in his room. He committed suicide by slitting his wrists.” Dumbledore’s voice was softer now, though Lucy couldn’t help but think that there were more delicate ways of delivering the news.

Ebony’s reaction was instantaneous. She jumped up from the couch as if she’d been stabbed with a hot poker from beneath. “No!” She screamed, beginning to sob (well, Lucy thought she was crying, but it really did look like her eyes were bleeding again). 

“Ebony, I -” B’loody Mary began, but was cut off.

“No, fuck off!” She commanded, storming off to her own dorm. Lucy was half-tempted to go after her, but in all honesty, she felt the need for a very substantial drink. Besides, if that was how Ebony was speaking to her friends, Merlin only knew what she'd say about a “prep” like her trying to console her. No, Lucy would far rather just go to the pub and get pissed out of her mind.

And yet, as she and Adam slunk out of the dungeons, there was an irritating, sobering voice at the back of her mind insisting that part of what had just happened was her fault. She and her cohort had hardly been the most pleasant to Draco, especially not since his conversion into gothic-ness. Had they gone too far? What had been his breaking point? Guilt began to creep through her very blood, its icy fingers clawing and gripping at her heart as she began to cry. Adam pulled her into a brotherly embrace when he saw the tears fall down her scrunched-up face, trying to calm her down but it was clear that he was thinking the exact same thing. 

Tim was still standing by the main entrance, his arms folded crossly. "What the fuck was that all about then?" 

Lucy and Adam looked at each other. "Draco's dead." Adam said softly. 

A sombre silence descended over the eight of them. "Shit." breathed Tim, utterly dumbstruck. "W-what happened?" 

"He killed himself.” Adam muttered bleakly. “I found him in the dorm when I went to get my wallet. Luce came in about half a minute later." 

Lucy was glad that Adam could remember what had happened so clearly. She'd probably be asked to give a witness statement of the events to the aurors and she'd already basically forgotten. 

"Shit." Amanda echoed. "Did he leave a note?" 

Adam sniffed. "Dunno. Didn't see one." His voice was on the verge of breaking.

They were all silent again for a moment. Nobody could quite look each other in the eye. 

"We'll have missed our table by now." said Tim quietly, glancing down at his watch. 

Matthew groaned. "Oh for fuck’s sake Tim, could you stop being such a complete tightarse for five fucking minutes? Draco's fucking dead in there and all you can think about is your bloody booking fee? Dickhead." Were the circumstances different, Lucy would have chortled. Matthew always became so foul-mouthed when he was angry it was often difficult to take him seriously. But now really wasn't the time.

"I was only saying." Tim muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets and averting his eyes. 

"How'd Ebony take it? Does she know yet?" Ruth asked darkly, clearly remembering the impassioned display in that morning's potions class. 

Lucy finally managed to speak. Her throat felt raw from all her screaming and crying. "Yeah, she knows. Dumbledore told her once he'd seen for himself. Took it as well as you'd expect her to, so not well at all. Not that I really blame her." Despite trying to take a lighter tone, Lucy could feel another sob rising into her mouth. Sensing this, Adam transferred her gently into Matthew's strong, soothing arms. 

Suddenly, remembering the sight and smell in the dormitory, she felt the need to be violently sick and sped off to the bathrooms with a hand clasped over her mouth. Maggie ran after her, and scooped her hair away from her face while she retched and coughed into the sink. Once Lucy managed to gulp down a few lungfuls of air, she slowly lifted her head, steadying herself with her hands gripping the porcelain. 

It was then that Lucy and Maggie suddenly became aware of a sort of… faint, wet, slapping noise. Confused, and a little troubled, they followed the sound until they reached the sunken baths, to see Ebony, half-submerged in steaming water, rubbing a piece of raw meat against her bare chest. 

“Oh, I get it.” Maggie whispered to Lucy after a moment of stunned silence.

“What?”

“She thinks she’s a vampire. You kill them with a STAKE to the heart. She must have thought it was a STEAK, as in the food.”

“Oh, right.” Lucy shook her head in disbelief. “No, there’s no way she can be that clueless, is there?”

“Clearly there is.” said Maggie, looking back at Ebony who had now thrown the steak to the side in frustration. She then climbed out of the bath and seized her towel (Lucy had no idea that Marylin Manson's merchandising was so broad), but before she could comment on Maggie and Lucy’s sudden appearance the three of them heard a stifled groan from outside. Their focus instantly snapped to the window, and had the events of that day not already been so utterly absurd, they would not have believed their eyes.

Hovering outside the room on their broomsticks were Professor Snape and Professor Lupin. Snape was holding an old-style camcorder with which he had presumably been filming Ebony in the bath, and Lupin had a hand down the front of his trousers, rummaging suspiciously.

Lucy’s face contorted in appalment as Ebony let loose her rage.

“Ew, you fucking pervs, stop looking at me naked! Are you paedos or what?” she shrieked, pulling her towel around herself tighter.

Suddenly, Vampire ran in (Lucy couldn’t help but wonder how he would have known about this from all the way in the Gryffindor Tower) brandishing his wand.

“Avada kedavra!” He cried, pointing his wand at Snape and Lupin through the open window.

Lucy and Maggie gasped, horrified. “Was that…” Lucy began.

“That’s, like, a life sentence at Azkaban. No parole or anything.” Maggie confirmed, equally dismayed by what she had just heard.

Ebony snatched a handgun from a shelf that people normally put their shampoo on, loaded it, and began firing at the two debased professors. Lucy and Maggie reeled backwards, clapping their hands over their ringing ears in an attempt to protect them from the blasts that didn’t seem to be bothering Ebony or Vampire.

While Ebony was still firing, Dumbledore burst into the room as well.

“What the fuck is going on?” Lucy shouted at Maggie, struggling to be heard over the sound of Ebony’s gun.

“Ebony! It has revealed that someone has-” Dumbledore began but stopped suddenly, running over to the window upon seeing Snape and Lupin clinging to their brooms in bloodied clothes, faces twisting in agony. “No!” He cried. He waved his wand frantically, but didn’t cast anything.

Then, at the precise moment when Lucy thought to herself that today could not possibly resemble an acid-fuelled fever dream any more, Hagrid suddenly appeared on his broom, floating outside the window next to Snape and Lupin. “Everyone, we need to talk.” he said in an authoritative voice.

As if on cue to hear Hagrid’s announcement, Amanda, Matthew, Adam, and Ruth all scrambled into the room, coming to an abrupt halt as they drank in the extraordinary scene before them.

“We heard gunshots.” Matthew explained, heading over to Lucy and Maggie to check they were alright (he was always itching to show off the rudimentary medical knowledge he picked up during his summer work experience at St. Mungo’s a couple of years ago).

Ebony took no notice of their arrival. “What do you know, Hargrid?” Was that really how it was pronounced? Lucy had been sure it was Hagrid. “You’re just a little Hogwarts student!”

Hagrid did not take this well. “I may be a Hogwarts student…” He paused for effect. “But I am also a Satanist!”

“This cannot be!” Snape gasped, a look of horror creeping across his face. “There must be other factors!”

“Who actually speaks like that?” Matthew whispered to Lucy, who simply shrugged.

“You don’t have any!” Ebony retorted angrily. Now Lucy WAS confused.

Having been silent for some time, Lupin unexpectedly held up Snape’s camcorder in triumph. “The lens may be ruined, but the tape is still there!” It seemed that it was only at this did Lupin register both Hagrid’s presence and what he had said. “Why are you doing this?” He asked heatedly while tucking himself back into his trousers with his bloodied hands.

“Because… because…” Hagrid rose his wand emphatically, then suddenly soared through window into the bathroom, while singing what Lucy could only even begin to describe as 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” but to the tune of My Chemical Romance’s “Teenagers” (which now brought the running total of songs that Lucy actually quite liked that were now ruined for her forever by Ebony and her posse to three). 

“Because you’re goffic?” Snape asked in a timid voice. Lucy supposed that his sudden fear of Hagrid stemmed from the recent revelation of Hagrid’s Satanism, since Snape was known as a devout Christian. In Lucy’s mind, that in itself made Snape something of a walking oxymoron, as she had always been lead to believe that witchcraft was considered a sin within Christianity, but since the rest of the events of the day seemed to be exempt from the laws of logic she resolved not to dwell on it too much.

Hagrid suddenly finishing his sentence commanded Lucy out of her reverie. “Because I love her!”


	12. Chapter XII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mini-hiatus over. Sorry about the wait for this one, I've been spending some time working on schoolwork and university applications and all that kind of stuff. hargrid isn’t really in luv wif ebony dat was sedric ok!
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Ebony was visibly dismayed by this. From seemingly out of nowhere, she drew a small silver dagger bearing the Malfoy family crest (in Lucy’s opinion, it was a decidedly ugly emblem in comparison to her own family’s, which was an ostentatious affair decorated with plumes, leaves, and a sea-green peacock under which the ancient Bonniface family motto, “Pulchritudo Vincit Omnia”, was written on a flowing banner). Though before Ebony had time to use it, she was startled by Vampire suddenly crying out in pain, and the dagger clattered to the floor.

“OMFG! No! My scar hurts!” Vampire screamed, writhing on the floor and clawing at his head. His eyes rolled back in their sockets as if he were having a seizure, and Matthew instinctively began to lurch forward, hoping to diagnose him, but Lucy caught him by the sleeve of his jumper.

“No!” Ebony crowed, approaching him. “I thought you didn’t have a scar anymore!”

“I do, but Diabolo-”

“Who? Lucy spat under her breath.

“Ron Weasley.” Maggie whispered.

“-Changed it into a pentagram for me and I always cover it up with foundation!” He gradually rose to his knees, feeling around on his forehead. “Anyway, my scar hurt and it turned back into a lightning bolt! Save me! Then I had a vision of what was happening to Draco… Volfemort has him in bondage!”

Ebony froze. 

“The fuck is a Volfemort?” Maggie muttered.

“I guess he must have meant Voldemort? Maybe he’s got a blood clot or something.” replied Matthew.

“How did you know?” Ebony whispered, inches away from Vampire now.

“I saw it! And my scar turned back into a lightning bolt!” he repeated.

Vampire was now visibly distressed, but wouldn’t divulge any more. After a few more moments of expectant silence, Matthew helped Lucy and Maggie to their feet.

“Come on, you two should probably see the nurse. Mental anguish and all that.”

It wasn’t long once Lucy and Maggie were admitted to the hospital wing for a checkup for Ebony to follow suit. Though Madame Pomfrey had pulled the privacy screen between Lucy and Ebony, it was easy for Maggie and Lucy to hear what was being said on the other side.

Hagrid had come to visit her. Based on his silhouette, he’d brought her a large bouquet of flowers.

“Ebony, I need to tell you something.” His tone was grave as Lucy and Maggie heard the rustle of Hagrid passing her the bouquet

“Fuck off.” Ebony snarled. “You know I fucking hate the colour pink anyway, and I don’t like fucked up pricks like you.” Lucy had to bite back a snicker at such a beginner mistake on Hagrid’s part.

“No Ebony, those are not roses.” Hagrid replied. Lucy and Maggie looked at each other sceptically. Where was this going?

“What, are they goffs too you poser prep?” Ebony asked, voice dripping with so much overdone sarcasm that Lucy wanted to cringe.

“I saved your life!” Hagrid suddenly snapped. 

“No you didn’t, you saved me from getting a Paris Hilton porn video made from my shower scene and being viewed by Snape and Lupin.”

“Who masturbated to it.” Hagrid muttered, almost inaudibly. 

“Whatever!” Ebony cried irritably.

Hagrid drew his wand. “These aren’t roses.” He repeated. “Well if you wanted honesty that’s all you had to say!”

“That’s not a spell.” Ebony interrupted him. “That’s an MCR song.”

“Easy mistake to make.” Lucy quipped quietly, drawing a stifled snort from Maggie.

“I know, I was just warming up my vocal cords.” Hagrid suddenly raised his voice. “Petulus merengo mi kremicli romacio! Imo noto okayo!”

Before Maggie could nudge Lucy and make a snide remark about the unfamiliar spell Hagrid had just cast, there was a sudden violent crack in the air, as if lightning had just struck the building, and a ball of black flames rose above them, visible to Lucy and Maggie over the screen. They stared, mouths agape and brows furrowed.

“Okay, I believe you.” Ebony breathed, audibly surprised. “Now where the fuck is Draco?”

Nothing was said for a few moments, then, utterly unprompted, Dumbledore swept into the hospital wing and approached Ebony’s bed. “You see Ebony, to see what is in the flames you must find yourself first.”

Lucy cringed. What kind of pseudo-prophetic bollocks was that supposed to be?

“I have found myself you mean old man!” Hagrid suddenly snapped at him. Lucy and Maggie leaned forward awaiting Dumbledore’s reply, but were only met with stunned silence. “You’re a liar, Professor Dumbledore!”

“Yikes, what’s his major malfunction?” Maggie whispered to Lucy.

Much to the two girls’ disappointment, Ebony’s bedside was far quieter for the rest of the day, aside from a fairly cringeworthy and uninteresting visit from Vampire and B’loody Mary.

Lucy and Maggie were discharged later that evening. When they returned to their dorms, they were surprised to find it empty.

“You’ve not seen Willow recently, have you?” Maggie asked offhandedly.

“Don’t think so. I don’t have any classes with her though.”

“Yeah, fair enough. I’ve just not seen her in a while.”

“Oh. Now you mention it… huh. Weird.”

After a couple of days, Ebony was discharged as well. This was made very well known to Lucy and Jack during the last period of the day.

Vampire had been sniffing around Jack all through the lesson.

“I reckon he can smell all the weed in your bloodstream.” Lucy whispered, nudging him.

“Fuckin’ narc. Ow!” Jack yelped as he snatched his exposed wrist away from Vampire, who had just sunk his teeth into him.

Vampire glared sulkily at Jack and began to turn away, but then spotted Ebony approaching the forest.

“Hi.” He said as Ebony drew nearer.

“Hi back.” She replied sullenly.

Deeply underwhelmed with their exchange so far, Lucy and Jack turned their attention back to what Professor Grubbly-Plank was saying, and their eyes were only lured back in the direction of Ebony and Vampire by the sound of an all too familiar sort of… faint, wet, slapping noise.

Lucy turned around, followed shortly by Jack, but instead of Ebony adorning herself with raw meat again, they were smacked in the face with the sight of Vampire kneeling over her with his trousers around his ankles and her fishnet-clad legs wrapped tightly around his hips as they rocked back and forth to the pace of Vampire’s shaky thrusts.

Jack let out a groan of protest and disgust, while Lucy’s face settled into an expression of exhausted disappointment, like a tired mother who had given up on trying to discipline a naughty child. She was finding it increasingly difficult to be shocked by Ebony’s behaviour.

“Stop it now, you horny simpletons!” cried Professor Grubbly-Plank, finally becoming aware of what her students were finding so outrageously entertaining.

As if waking from a trance, Ebony suddenly balled up her fists and beat Vampire away from her. “Vampire you fucker!” She punctuated the insult with a sharp slap across his face. “Stop trying to screw me! You know I loved Draco!”

She kicked her legs for a moment while Vampire cautiously backed off, before beginning to stomp away, but before she was out of earshot Vampire gave a shout of pain and fell to his knees, clutching at his forehead in a very similar fashion to how he had a few days ago in the bathroom. “OMFG! No! My scar hurts!”

Lucy could have sworn she'd seen this before.

“No!” Ebony cried in response, running back over to him as he thrashed around in the grass. “I thought you didn’t have a scar anymore!”

“I do, but Diabolo - “

“Who?” Jack asked aloud.

“Ron Weasley.” chimed his classmates in unison.

“ - Changed it into a pentagram for me and I always cover it up with foundation!” He finally overcame his agonised convulsions and sat up. “Anyway,” He continued almost nonchalantly. “My scar hurt and then I had a vision of what was happening to Draco… Volfemort has him in bondage!”


	13. Chapter XIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops. I didn't realise it had been two months since I updated this. uhhhhh somthing something prepz fuvk of stop flamming da stroy grerod way is my daddy fangs 4 da reviows  
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Lucy still felt very much in the dark about who Volfemort was. 

After staring into each other’s eyes for a few moments (Lucy was worried that they would pounce on each other again), Ebony and Vampire suddenly leapt up and began sprinting back to the castle. Watching them disappear up the hill, Lucy was suddenly struck with an uncharacteristic burst of adventurous spirit. She seized Jack by the wrist and pulled his sleeve up, studying his watch for a second before charging away from the forest after Ebony and Vampire, dragging Jack behind her.

“Hey! What are you playing at?” Jack snapped, tugging his abused wrist out of her grasp and frowning.

Lucy whipped around excitedly. “Come on! Don’t you want to see where they’re going? There’s barely five minutes of class left, it doesn’t matter!”

Jack didn’t take much persuading. “Sure, okay.” He shrugged, and the two ran eagerly away from their classmates. 

The heels of their school shoes clattered noisily against the flagstones in the main castle, ringing around in the high-ceilinged corridors as they followed Ebony and Vampire through twists and turns that they had barely travelled once in all their seven years. As the end of the period drew nearer, small groups of students, having been dismissed early from their lessons, began to trickle into the hallways, making it harder for Lucy and Jack to keep Ebony and Vampire in sight.

As they rounded what felt like the hundredth corner in their chase, they collided head-on with Matthew, Tim, and Adam leaving the Astronomy Tower. 

“Woah, where’re you two headed in such a rush?” asked Tim, straightening his perfectly-pressed tie and stepping in front of Lucy.

“We’re following Vampire and Ebony! There’s no time to explain, just come on!” gabbled Lucy in a breathless reply, gesticulating wildly in the direction that Jack had already begun running again. “Come on!” Lucy repeated without giving them time to think twice, looking over her shoulder as she pushed past Tim and followed Jack. The three boys made a series of faces at each other as Jack and Lucy disappeared around yet another corner, then sprinted after them, robes flapping behind them.

Suddenly, Jack screeched to a halt just inside Dumbledore’s office, his abrupt stop causing Lucy, then Matthew, then Adam, then Tim, to crash into each other’s backs in sequence behind him. They began to complain over each other at Jack, but he silenced them with a swift hand movement and indicated in front of him into office. Peering inside, they saw Ebony and Vampire standing before Dumbledore, their impassioned voices echoing through the room and into the doorway where the five of them hid.

“What is it you want, you despicable snobs?” Dumbledore demanded, his patience with the two of them already wearing thin.

“Volsemort has Draco!” cried Ebony and Vampire in unison.

Dumbledore seemed to inspect his feet for a moment, before lifting his head again and chuckling cruelly.

“No! Don’t! We need to save Draco!” they begged, still in unison. It was starting to make Lucy a bit queasy.

Dumbledore’s expression suddenly darkened. “No!” he spat bitterly. “I don’t give a darn what Voldemort does to Draco. Not after how much he misbehaved in school, especially with YOU, Ebony!” He jabbed a bony, accusatory finger at Ebony before turning his back to them. “Besides, I never liked him that much anyway.” He said before walking away.

Vampire began to snivel. “My Draco!” he wailed, crushing his face into Ebony’s shoulder.

“I didn’t think Draco and Vampire were dating anymore? Isn’t that kind of what kicked all of this off?” whispered Matthew. Lucy could only shrug in reply.

“It’s okay!” Ebony tried to comfort him, though her attempts were in vain. Then, he suddenly whipped his head back up, and rested his hands on Ebony’s shoulders.

“I had an idea!” he announced, drawing his wand.

“What?” Ebony urged.

Vampire smirked. “You’ll see.” He began to recite a long spell that Lucy didn’t recognise.

As Vampire was speaking, the five eavesdroppers found themselves unable to quench their curiosity an began to creep closer, but before they really understood what was happening, the room seemed to warp around them. The walls melted and shifted, until their surroundings were no longer recognisable. The air suddenly felt dank and close, and it took a while for Lucy’s weak eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness.

Ebony and Vampire still somehow failed to notice the presence of Lucy and her friends, who had begun to huddle closer together as they surveyed the environment. Ebony drew her wand as well, and the two of them charged ahead into the gloom. Tentatively, moving as one unit, the five who remained began to shuffle forward, hoping that Ebony and Vampire knew where they were.

Just as Ebony and Vampire came back into sight, a powerful, cruel voice pierced the murk.

“Allah Kedavra!”

Lucy and Matthew shrieked in horror, and latched onto each other. Tim, who had been listening more carefully, sneered.

“What? That’s not how you cast it…”

“Yeah? Why do YOU know how to cast it then?” Adam taunted.

“I-” Tim sighed and shook his head dismissively. “Fuck off.”

Before they could continue squabbling, Lucy and Matthew whimpered again. Their companions first looked at them, then at what had caused them such distress.

For a moment, a trick of the low light gave the man who had appeared before them the appearance of being nothing more than a floating skull. He stared at the group almost unseeingly, seeming far more interested in Ebony and Vampire. As he slowly stepped forward, the sharp toe of a heeled leather boot peeked out from under his dark robes.

“Volsemort…” Ebony breathed.


	14. Chapter XIV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ebony does some more bullshit, Voldemort finally makes an appearance, and Matthew continues to be a himbo. That is all. WARNING: SUM OF DIS CHAPTA IS XTREMLY SCRAY. VIOWER EXCRETION ADVISD.
> 
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No sooner had Ebony uttered the name than the figure in front of them suddenly changed to that of a short, rotund young man with bedraggled hair and long front teeth. As the motley group inched further into the chamber, the wretched form of Draco, gagged and bound, came into view. He began to grunt throatily behind his gag as he realised they were there, and the unknown man responded by delivering a sharp slap across Draco’s hollow-cheeked face. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten in several days. He raised his head again slowly, and a bright mark glowed where the man’s fleshy hand had connected with his cheek. Bloody tears spilled from his eyes, and Lucy swallowed and tightened her grip on Matthew’s jumper as she remembered the lurid sight of him sagging down on the bed in the boys’ dormitory. If this was assumed to be the real Draco, then whose body had Adam found? Judging from his parted lips and the twitch on his heavy brow, Adam was grappling with the same question.

While Lucy was still enveloped by her confusion, Ebony charged ahead, brandishing her handgun. 

“Rid my sight you despicable preps!” the young man demanded, struggling to make himself heard over Ebony’s sporadic gunfire. She readied herself to shoot him at point blank range, but faltered when the young man spoke again in a saccharine voice, falling to his knees. “EbonyIloveyoupleasehavesexwithme!” 

Ebony paused for a moment and lowered her gun. “Huh?” 

The young man smiled lovingly and tilted his head. “Ebony, I love you! Will you have sex with me?” He said as passionately as if he had asked to marry her.

For the first time that Lucy had ever seen, Ebony was momentarily too stunned to speak. Then she let out a mirthless laugh. “What the fuck? You torture my boyfriend then you expect me to fuck you?” Her voice took on a resentful quality as she drew the dagger bearing the Malfoy crest from the pocket of her miniskirt (how she had managed to not stab herself with it accidentally was beyond Lucy). “God you are so fucked up, you fucking bastard!” Without hesitation, Ebony lurched forward and plunged the blade into the young man’s chest.

Lucy’s group let out a collective gasp and huddled closer together once more, and Matthew drew his hand up to cover Lucy’s eyes in an attempt to keep her squeamishness at bay.

“No!” the young man gasped, clutching at his chest with shaking, panicked hands as he fell writhing to his side. His fat body gave a few pained heaves before stilling entirely as his hands dropped limply. Ebony whined and began to cry.

Clearly alerted by the commotion, yet another figure began to approach, accompanied by the resonant clacking of sharp heels on the rugged stones. “Snaketail, what art thou doing?” The voice belonged to the form that the first young man had initially taken. The same black robes, tattered at the hem, the same skeletal white face, devoid entirely of a nose and lips set into a hard, thin line, and the same highly polished black boots that peeked out as he stepped closer.

Ebony and Vampire wasted no time in cutting Draco free of his bonds, and before Voldemort even had time to react Vampire cried “Accio!”. A broomstick flew out of seemingly nowhere into his open hand. The three of them piled onto the broomstick and Vampire steered it into the darkness of the hallway.

“What?!” Tim was aghast, and rather exasperated, as if confronted with a butchered ending to a film.

In similar fashion to that afternoon Lucy and Jack scrambled after the broomstick, barely looking back to see their friends close behind them and Voldemort in hot pursuit. Lucy fixed her gaze ahead of her and concentrated solely on following the sound of the broomstick, through a labyrinthine network of dank tunnels that seemed to twist even as she ran through them. Her lungs began to burn and her unfit legs begged her to stop and still she ran with eyes wide and her glasses slipping down her nose from her sweat. Finally, after what felt like aeons of running for her life, Lucy felt the ground beneath her begin to form an incline, spiralling upwards until eventually she saw the light of day on the surface. The light was blocked out momentarily by Vampire, Ebony, and Draco soaring up through the hole and into the sky, at which point they disappeared. Now, with the end in sight, Lucy at last allowed herself to dare look behind her.

To her dismay, she saw she was alone. 

Her shaky legs finally gave way and she collapsed to the ground, gasping, as her head spun from shock and oxygen deprivation. She began to panic, and for a moment she contemplated turning back to look for her friends, before the faint clattering of hard-soled shoes on the stone filled the dim passageway, music to her ears. She would have wept with relief when she saw the four frightened faces come into the light if she had the time before Matthew wordlessly scooped her up and slung her over his broad shoulder. Though he insisted later for the sake of both their egos that she weighed barely more than a scarf draped casually around his neck, Lucy felt his knees buckle for the first few steps before he regained enough momentum to charge forward again for the final push to the surface. How far underground had they been?

Finally, they reached the surface and escaped through the cave, where, after Matthew had gained a bit of distance, Lucy spied their pursuer standing in the entrance. He stared out from the mouth of the cave at them as they fled, as if there were something preventing him from crossing the threshold, before his interest in them seemed to eclipse and he turned around, descending back into the depths of his lair.

“He’s gone!” Lucy shouted ahead. As soon as the three up ahead heard this, they slowed and crumpled into a heap on the grass, as if her voice itself had struck them down. Matthew's pace slowed to a shaky walk, panting as he set Lucy down before falling beside his friends, running his hands through his sandy hair that clung to his sweaty forehead. Lucy was still so high on adrenaline that she found the patchy flush of Matthew’s cheeks and the sound of him gulping down great lungfuls of fresh air almost erotic. He noticed the look she was giving him and flashed her a wicked, toothy grin, sitting up and planting a kiss on her cheek with a loud smack. 

"Not to ruin a beautiful moment," Tim began flatly with his usual unimpressed expression on his stern face, "but does anyone have a fucking clue where we are?" 

Jack and Adam murmured in agreement. The group took a moment to take in their surroundings. Tall pine trees towered over their heads, leaving only small patches of grey sky visible. The grass beneath them was patchy and damp, and they saw that the cave from which they had emerged rose from a small mound behind them. 

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were in the Forbidden Forest." Adam surmised.

"You think so? Wouldn't that be a bit too convenient?" Lucy asked sceptically, frowning. 

"Easy way to test the theory." Tim mumbled to himself, as he had a rather irritating habit of doing. He stood up, brushed his legs and backside of dirt, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his robe. The snaffles on his pristine loafers clinked quietly as he walked away, and the rest of the group took full advantage of this moment of respite to lie back on the damp grass and stretch out their tired legs. Lucy allowed her eyes to close, and after a minute or two she opened them again upon hearing the tink, tink, tink, of Tim’s shoes approaching once more.

“Adam was spot on.” Tim announced. He was holding a small piece of wood around the size of a tea tray under one arm. “We’re in the Forbidden Forest.” He presented the piece of wood to them, a sign that read in bold black lettering:

FORBIDDEN FOREST: STRICTLY NO ENTRY  
TURN BACK!

“Ah, shit.” muttered Jack, falling back down onto the grass and throwing an arm languidly over his eyes. “How are we meant to explain this then?”

Tim thought for a moment. “With any luck, the whole teaching staff will be so confused by Draco coming back from the dead that there’s theoretically no reason why we should be noticed.”

“I was wondering when we’d get the chance to bring that up actually.” said Lucy. “If Draco’s alive, and I guess we’re assuming that the Draco who was tied up in that cave was the real Draco, then who died in the boys’ dorm?”

A pensive silence fell on the five of them. “Maybe it was some kind of copy? Not like a clone, but a model or a decoy or something?” suggested Jack.

Adam frowned. “I think we’d have noticed if the body I found was a mannequin, Jack.”

“A glamour then, maybe. I don’t know!”

Adam grunted. He seemed marginally less offended by this suggestion.

“We should get going.” said Matthew, standing up while looking at his watch. We should be able to slip into dinner without anyone noticing if we walk quickly.”

Now that they had overcome their panicked disorientation, they could more easily see the outline of the castle’s highest spires that before had blended in with the trees of the dense forest. They rose, and began the trek back to Hogwarts.


	15. Chapter XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is technically two chapters from the original smooshed together because I fucked up some of the chronology, oopsies. du NAT flamm me 4 dat!!!!
> 
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By the time they were finally back on school grounds, the sky was streaked with violet and orange. Their once-presentable shoes were caked in mud and leaves, and Lucy’s bare legs had become mottled from the cold.

Thankfully, Tim’s estimation had been correct. They joined the crowd of students shuffling into the Great Hall, and, aside from a handful of funny looks to their muddy shoes and the fact that they were still in uniform, they attracted no attention.

“Where the hell have you been?” asked Maggie as Lucy and Adam sank down into their seats tiredly. They both gave her a look that simply said “don't ask”. Their conversation was subdued as they ate, and though Lucy promised Maggie that she’d explain at some point, both she and Adam did their absolute best to steer the topic away from the events of that afternoon.

“I need a bath.” announced Lucy after dinner, and she and Maggie walked arm in arm back to the dorms. 

Maggie flopped down on her bed and began to scroll through her phone as Lucy undressed. Once she’d stripped down to her underwear, she approached Maggie’s chest of drawers and began to rummage as if they were her own.

“I’m using your soap, mine’s run out.” she declared. 

“Okay. Don’t use all of it, I’m not going back into town until the weekend.”

“Yah, sure.”

She crumpled up all her dirty clothes into a ball and dropped them into the laundry chute, then wrapped her towel around her and shoved her feet into her slides. 

Mercifully, the bathroom was empty. Her slides squeaked on the wet floor as she approached the bath and turned on the hot tap, hanging her towel on a peg and inspecting her body in the mirror as she waited for the water to fill the tub.

Her lower half was peppered with bruises that she must have gathered through the course of the afternoon, and there was an angry-looking graze on her left knee that began to sting now that she had noticed it. She stretched and yawned, scratching her side absentmindedly, then gingerly stepped into the hot water. She relaxed down, closing her eyes and breathing deeply.

“Will you tell me what happened now? The boys are being super cagey.”

Lucy screeched, splashing hot water everywhere when she opened her eyes to see Maggie in her pyjamas crouching next to the bath.

“You think I’m more likely to tell you because I’ve got my tits out?”

Maggie looked her up and down. “What tits?”

Lucy flicked some more water at her. “Piss off.”

Maggie showed no sign of moving, and no matter how many times Lucy tried to sink her shoulders back below the water and ignore her, she could feel Maggie’s expectant gaze slowly boring two holes into the back of her skull. “Fine! I’ll tell you.” She shuffled around to face her. “So I had Magical Creatures with Jack last period today, and like three-quarters through the lesson Ebony materialised out of nowhere and started talking to Vampire.”

“Right, go on.”

“Well we weren’t really listening to what they were saying, it wasn’t anything particularly interesting so we just sort of ignored them.”

“Oh.”

“But THEN -”

“Uh-huh?”

“We turned around AGAIN and they were FUCKING.”

“What?” Maggie’s mouth lay agape for a moment, then she smirked and shook her head. “Nah, you’re fucking with me. That didn’t happen.”

“I swear! You can ask Jack if you don’t believe me! Anyway, they weren’t at it for long before Ebony started freaking out at Vampire because as far as she was concerned she was still with Draco, so she started to leave but then Vampire - you remember how he was in the bathrooms?”

“Yah”

“Well he started doing that again, but the weird thing was it was like EXACTLY the same thing, like verbatim.”

“Weird.”

“I know? So after he’d done that he and Ebony just took off, and there was barely any of the lesson left anyway so Jack and I went after them because we could, then we bumped into Adam, Tim, and Matt and they just sort of joined us. We followed them into Big Dumbles’ office, and Big Dumbles started monologuing about how much he secretly hated Draco or something like that. He left, then Vampire somehow managed to teleport all of us into this dungeon thing in a cave-”

“Stop right there.” Maggie smiled and shook her head again. “That’s bullshit.”

“Why would I lie? I don’t know HOW he did it, I just know that he did it. So anyway, we ended up in some kind of dungeon, where Draco was being diddled by some fattie who wanted to shag Ebony or something, but Ebony had that STRAP and started shooting him.” Maggie let out a sharp cackle that rang through the empty bathroom. “I suppose he must have heard the gunshots because after that this man with no nose or hair or anything came into the room, so I guess that’s Volsemort? I dunno, but the three of them fucked off, so we all collectively shat ourselves and ran for what felt like about a year until we finally came out in the Forbidden Forest.”

“Woah…” Maggie breathed, eyes wide. “What was it like?”

“What, the forest?” Lucy made a face. “It was just sort of.. I dunno, a forest. We didn’t see anything particularly exciting.”

“Oh. How disappointing.” Maggie said, sitting back on her haunches.

Lucy scrubbed herself with her flannel one last time then rose from the bath. “I’m done, shall we go?”

But before they could enter the dorm once again, they were stopped by the sound of arguing voices. Though the sound was dampened by the heavy wood of the door, Lucy and Maggie could clearly make out Ebony’s nasal whine.

“Why can’t I just be ugly or plain like all the other girls and preps here? Except for B’loody Mary, because she’s not ugly or anything.”

Lucy and Maggie looked at each other. “None taken.” Maggie whispered dryly.

“Why would you wanna be ugly? I don’t like the preps anyway. They are such fucking sluts.” They heard Draco reply.

“Oh it gets better! So are we ugly, or are we sluts? Or both?.” Lucy whispered back.

Before Maggie could answer, Ebony seemed to snap on the other side of the door.

“Yeah, but everyone is in love with me! Like Snape and Lupin took a video of me naked, Hargrid says he’s in love with me, Vampire likes me and now even Snaketail is in love with me! I just wanna be with you, ok Draco? Why couldn’t Satan have made me less beautiful?” 

The final comment made it extremely difficult for Lucy and Maggie to not scream. They clapped their hands over their mouths and leant closer to the door.

“I'm good at too many things! Why can’t I just be normal? It’s a fucking curse!” came Ebony’s final shout before flinging the door open and storming out, barely acknowledging the presence of the other two girls. Draco was left standing in the doorway, staring blankly at them, before awkwardly averting his eyes and scampering after Ebony like a nervous puppy.

The next morning, as Lucy crept from her bed and began to dress, the door was flung open by Ebony, still dressed as she had been the night before. With her signature brand of melodrama, Ebony snatched the razor from her bedside table and swiftly drew it across her scarred wrist, before holding it to her mouth as if drinking from herself. Lucy cringed and hurried into the bathroom.

Lucy’s morning was blissfully Ebony-free, and as she translated a passage of ancient runes she slowly became aware of what a peaceful feeling that was. Her respite, however, was cut tragically short at breaktime by Matthew proudly thrusting his phone under her nose, playing a shaky video with sound dampened by his and Tony Cohen’s hooting laughter. She snatched the phone from his hand and adjusted her glasses as Ruth and Amanda peered at the screen over her shoulders. To Lucy’s chagrin, the video was (of course) of Ebony and Draco. Ebony had her arms draped around his neck, gazing up at him as he sang something god-awful at her. Professor Sprout seemed to be ignoring them, as her cheerful voice could be faintly heard in the background. The video ended abruptly on a frame of Ebony presenting her middle finger at the camera.

“Well what the fuck was all that about?” asked Amanda.

Matthew shrugged, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “No clue. Funny though.”

Adam suddenly approached through the courtyard, an amused smile on his broad face. “Tasty news.” he announced. “Concert in Hogsmeade tonight, My Chemical Romance. You’d think that the venues are following Ebony on Spotify or something from how well they seem to know EXACTLY who she listens to, but that’s neither here nor there. We going?”

Lucy sighed thoughtfully and looked up Ruth, who scrunched up her face and shook her head. “I’m not sure about it. I’m swamped with work, I know for a fact so is Luce because she’s copying my essay plan. You only want to go to stalk Ebony because you’re a sad case.”

Adam kissed his teeth and leant against a pillar “Suit yourself.”

The bell rang. Lucy got up from the windowsill and stretched. “There’ll be another surveillance opportunity for you sometime soon Adam, I wouldn’t worry about it.”


	16. Chapter XVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter had no business taking as long as it did but such is life. Mention of rape trigger warning. fAngz 2 goolugulu trinslut 4 help wiv da japoneice!
> 
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“はじめまして gurl.” said B’loody Mary as Lucy and Maggie entered the dorm. For a moment they thought she was speaking to them, but as they struggled to reply Ebony pushed past them. “BTW, Willow that fucking poser got expelled. She failed all her classes and skipped arithmancy.”

“Did Willow even take arithmancy? I thought she got, like, a T in her O.W.L.” asked Maggie, and was met by a scornful stare from Ebony and B’loody Mary.

“It serves that fucking bitch right.” Ebony cackled, turning her back to Maggie. They sat down side-by-side on B’loody Mary’s bed, pulling out her laptop and beginning to play The Nightmare Before Christmas. “Maybe Willow will die, too.” Ebony remarked offhandedly.

“かわいい.” replied B’loody Mary.

Lucy and Maggie huddled together on Lucy’s bed, mirroring the other two girls. “When did she start speaking Japanese?” Lucy said in a low voice.

“No idea. I didn’t even know she was in our dorm.” replied Maggie just as quietly.

“I guess she’s replacing Willow?”

“Oh yeah, I have a confession.” B’loody Mary announced as if she had been listening. “After she got expelled I murdered her and then Lupin did it with her because he’s a necrophile.

“かわいい.” was all Ebony had to say is response.

“What the fuck?” Maggie mouthed to Lucy, horrified. With one more look at Ebony and B’loody Mary, who now seemed engrossed in their film, Maggie rose and motioned for Lucy to follow her into the bathroom.

“She murdered her?” repeated Lucy when they were sure the door was firmly closed. “Then Lupin raped the body?”

Maggie looked pensive and chewed the inside of her cheek. “Right, on a scale of 1 to 10 how bullshit do we think that statement is?”

Lucy sighed. “If it were anyone else? Complete bullshit. From her? Not so much. If I didn’t know any better I’d say we ought to report it.”

“Yeah… okay, when was the last time you saw Willow?” 

“It must have been…” Lucy pursed her lips in thought. “Can’t have been since pseudo-Draco’s suicide.”

“But that was, what, four weeks ago?”  
“Give or take.”

“So the timeframe’s plausible. But where would she have done it?” Maggie perched on the side of a sink and began to grind her heel into the floor.

“Hogsmeade, maybe? Or the Forest? I don’t know, what I do know is I don’t like any of it. It’s just a little bit too characteristic of all of them to be a complete lie.” 

Maggie inspected her shoes for a moment. “We need to go to the aurors.” She concluded.

Lucy nodded gravely. “When?” 

“I’d probably say this weekend if we can. If we leave it later than that they might give us shit for not coming sooner.”

“That’s a point.” Lucy conceded. The atmosphere suddenly felt oppressive as the two girls avoided each others’ gaze. The muffled voices on the other side of the door now seemed ominous, and Lucy couldn’t help but feel uneasy at the prospect of sleeping there tonight.

She was on edge for the rest of the week. Their friends noticed hers and Maggie’s preoccupation, but when asked about it there was something, and they could never quite put their finger on it, that kept them from revealing B’loody Mary’s confession. When Saturday morning finally arrived, Lucy woke with a knot in her stomach and hesitation in her mind. Her lack of appetite at breakfast was even more pronounced, struggling to even finish her coffee. As she forced down mouthful after mouthful, Maggie was leaning back to speak to Amanda sitting at the Hufflepuff table; she had managed her nerves well enough to be able to explain their plan to her.

“Amanda wants to come with us.”

“Huh?”

“For moral support. Her cousins’ an auror or something and she knows how you’re meant to talk to them.”

“Oh, right. I didn’t know there was a ‘way’ you’re supposed to speak to them?” Lucy also leant back, so that Amanda was sandwiched between the two Slytherins. 

“God yes.” Amanda replied. “Apparently there’s some weird legal loophole they can get you with unless you answer some of the questions a specific way.”

Before Lucy could comment on the new wave of anxiousness that this information had brought on, a scrunched up napkin smacked Amanda in the face. She yelped, and Lucy picked it up out of her lap. She opened it up to see the words “ready to go now?” scribbled across it in chicken-scrawl handwriting. The three girls looked towards the Gryffindor table to see Isaac poking his head out of the crowd and smiling his signature gormless smile at them. Maggie rolled her eyes and slowly stood up; Lucy and Amanda copied her (Maggie was the oldest girl in the year, and in many ways that made her something of a big sister figure to the other girls). 

Somehow, Isaac was already standing beside his car (his sister’s Fiat 500), and greeted them with another vacant grin.


	17. Chapter XVII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't have masses to say about this chapter other than sorry it's taken this long to update. If uoureue a prep than du nat red it!!!!!!!!!!!  
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“Come on Luce, it’ll be fine.”

Lucy was refusing to move, paralysed by nervousness. Maggie was starting to get irritated, and was running out of soothing words with which to coax Lucy off the wide stone steps to the auror outpost.

“Do you want me and Maggie to go in without you?” asked Amanda.

Lucy shook her head wordlessly like a traumatised child. 

“Luce, what has got into you right now? You were all for it on Tuesday.”

“What if we’re wrong and she WAS just bullshitting? If we’re wrong they might arrest us for wasting auror time or something.” She twisted her mouth as if she were about to be sick.

“They won’t, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re right, then you’ve given them a valuable tipoff, and if you’re wrong it’s an honest mistake. There’s literally no grounds to arrest you.”

Good old Amanda, always the voice of reason. Lovely, sensible Amanda. Maggie, however, was sick of it. “Lucy if you don’t get off your fat arse in the next 10 seconds and get in that interview room with us I’m telling Isaac to leave you behind and you can walk back to Hogwarts.”

Now that WAS a dilemma. Risk arrest for wasting auror time, thought Lucy, or be made to do exercise? The former seemed far more appealing. She stood up tentatively.

“Fucking finally.” Maggie muttered irritably, sounding almost like Tim.

The junior auror behind the entrance desk appeared determined to perpetuate every single stereotype of an auror known to man. Donut in hand, empty coffee cups piled around the perspex screen, nose buried in some outdated comic book. He seemed mildly offended by the presence of the three girls, as if his auror’s uniform was somehow a ruse and they were distracting him from his real job. “Can I help you?” He asked, eyes lidded with lack of interest.

“We’d like to file a missing persons report.” Said Maggie, stepping forward to the desk. 

Lucy glanced warily around the room. It was rustic, and a little dingy. The thin December sunlight reflected off the snow outside, barely helping the feeble ceiling lights in illuminating the room. The benches were wooden and uncomfortable-looking, like church pews. She could hear shuffling beyond the closed door.

The junior auror, whose name badge read JA Bailey, rolled his eyes and drew a deep breath, closing his comic book slowly and deliberately. “Sign in here please.” JA Bailey pushed a black book and a quill under the screen, then cast a silencing charm. He leant back into his little office and shouted something, settled back into his seat, and removed the charm. As Maggie scribbled, another auror appeared through the door next to the reception desk. 

“Hullo girls, something we can help with?” said the second auror in a more welcoming tone.

“We’d like to report a missing person.” Maggie repeated. 

“Alright. If you’d just like to follow me, I can take a statement.”

He led the three girls through the door and down a long hallway, then into a small boxy room labelled ‘interview room D’. He motioned for the girls to sit. "Right," he began. "First things first, could you give me the name of the missing person?" 

"Willow Iero." Maggie replied. Lucy glanced at her. Was that some kind of joke? Or was that really her name? 

"Okay. And what relationship are you to Willow?" the auror continued. 

"We're her classmates. She was in our dorm." 

"I see. So you three are from Hogwarts?"

They nodded. A nostalgic smile crept across the aurora's face. "Good old days. I graduated in the 90's, Ravenclaw pride. Any of you Ravenclaw?" 

"Nope. Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Slytherin." said Amanda, pointing to herself, then Lucy, then Maggie. "Willow's Slytherin too, if that's relevant."

"Ah well, nevermind." The auror began to scribble in a notebook. "When was the last time you saw Willow?" 

"About a month ago." said Lucy hesitantly. 

"You don't sound sure about that?" 

"We can't be certain since we don't really have any friends in common and we don't have any classes together, but we noticed she wasn't there in the dorm roughly a month ago." Maggie jumped in to rescue Lucy. 

"Alright." More scribbling. "If you've not seen her for a month, why not report it sooner? Most people tend to report after a couple of days." 

Lucy began to chew on her tongue. 

"She didn't have the best behavioural track record, so we just assumed she'd been expelled." Amanda looked to her friends, who both gave an assenting nod. 

"We only started to get worried after something another girl in our dorm said this week." Maggie added. 

"Which was?" the auror asked, not looking up from his notes. 

"She said that Willow had been expelled for not doing her homework, which didn't really surprise us. But then she said that after she'd been expelled, she killed her, killed Willow, and that one of the professors had…" Maggie trailed off. 

"Done questionable things of a sexual nature with the body." finished Amanda with an air of professionalism. 

The auror looked up suspiciously. He slowly set his quill down beside his notebook and stared hard at the three of them. "This is turning into a very serious accusation. You understand that don't you?" 

A pause. They nodded. 

"Do you have any evidence to support this?" the auror continued. 

Amanda swallowed. "No, we don't, other than the fact that we firmly believe the person who claimed to have killed Willow is the sort of person who would be capable of that sort of thing." Her hands began to tremble slightly as she spoke. 

The auror leant back in his chair, stroking the stubble on his chin. “Look girls, I appreciate that you’re worried about your friend, but without any kind of evidence I’m neither comfortable nor able to do anything about it right now.” Upon seeing the frightened look on Lucy’s face, he sat up again and gave a reassuring half-smile. “Of course, if the situation changes and you _do _come across something a bit more substantial, I’d be more than happy to look into it. As you can probably guess, Hogsmeade is hardly London. We’re not exactly inundated with crime.”__

____

____

The three exchanged glances. “We understand.” said Amanda. 

The auror wiped the ink from the end of his quill on a handkerchief and stood up. “Happy to help, ladies. If you need anything in the future, just pop in and ask for Mulcaster. That’s me, by the way.” He added with a smile.

They thanked him, and followed him out of the outpost. The air of the morning was almost dizzying to Lucy in comparison to the stuffy interview room, and her legs shook as she descended the steps to the pavement. 

"See? Wasn't so bad." said Maggie. 

"It was awful. Did you see how he looked at us when we said how long she'd been missing for?" Lucy snapped. 

"Well, nevermind. Point is it's on the record now." Maggie turned her back and surveyed the street. "Does anyone know where we're meeting Isaac?" 

"Nope." Amanda shivered and tucked her hands into her pockets. 

"Fucks sake." Maggie kicked a stone into the road. "Shall we get a coffee or something?" 

"Yeah alright, I'll text him. Come on Luce."


End file.
